Re: info -> html

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Karl Berry <address@hidden> ha escrit:

> The biggest reason I have seen mentioned to keep the standalone Info
> viewer is size -- distros don't want to pull in all of Emacs.  But once
> it has to understand XML+Unicode+..., I doubt it will make much
> difference.

It understands Unicode already. As to XML, its handling is quite
straightforward, and I don't think it will bloat the code
much.

Let's also keep in mind that the attitude of users and distro packagers
towards info documentation is far from being favorable. Quite many
factors attribute to this, ranging from the mere force of habit and
being used to manpages, up to notorious "license problems" which exist
in perception of some distros (Debian comes to mind). Among these
factors not the least one is the ease of browsing the info
documentation. Even in its current state, people quite often (in fact,
more often than not) complain of the default standalone info behavior
and bindings being cumbersome to use. See, for example, this thread:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2012-01/msg00027.html>.
It is not an isolated case, I have to answer similar postings over and
over again in all projects I maintain. Now, removing the standalone
viewer and telling people to use Emacs if they want to read the docs,
certainly will not imrove the perception of Texinfo system at all.
At the very best it will lead to use of third-party readers insead
(there are already several such readers for the existing info format).
In my opinion it will be a wrong move.

Regards,
Sergey